Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

The Software

The first step to this is installing the software. To do so, you must install Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr). Once you do so, (dual booting with Windows is OK) install ROS by following the instructions here. After you're finished with that, create a catkin workspace and install the packages tum_ardrone and ardrone_autonomy. From there, finish by creating two Python files, and copy/paste one of the codes into one file, and the other into the other. The codes can be found below in the 'attachments' section. Feel free to name the files whatever you want.

The Hardware

After you have completed the instructions in the above section, simply plug in the sensor and run the 'capacitive sensor subscriber' node. You should see information about where the sensor is being pressed. Power on your AR drone and connect to its WiFi, then follow the instructions below.

Up and Running

Type the following into a terminal:

roscore

open a new terminal

rosrun ardrone_autonomy ardrone_driver

open a new terminal

rosrun tum_ardrone drone_stateestimation

open a new terminal

rosrun tum_ardrone drone_autopilot

open a new terminal

rosrun tum_ardrone drone_gui

open a new terminal

python (whatever you named the file containing the code for capacitive sensor subscriber)

open a new terminal

python (whatever you named the other file)

Viola! You now have a touchpad-controlled drone! See the videos below for examples of this working.

Have any questions? Feel free to contact me at aydinthechemist@gmail.com.